Advertisers Are Following Your Internet Trail
In today’s day and age, the world is always at our fingertips, day, or night. It resides charging on our nightstands, sitting on our desks and kitchen counters, or 90% of the time is buried in our pockets. It resides in a device that used to be used strictly as a way to call loved ones, friends, or your workplace, but now operates as a means to communicate, and serves as a personal assistant, waiting for us to open applications that make everyday tasks easy to complete in one CLICK.
There are over 6 billion people in the world that are in possession of a smartphone. That makes up more than 80 percent of the population. So let me ask you this, if you are one of these 6 billion people… have you ever experienced this chain of events?
1. You open up Instagram and see an influencer that you follow promoting a new product.
2. You open up your Safari browser to research this said product, resulting in you scanning and clicking through the companies website after hitting the “Accept Cookies” button that pops up in front of what you are trying to read.
3. You then open your Amazon application to try and find the same product for a cheaper price.
4. Following your purchase of this said product you begin to get flooded with similar products from other companies while browsing your computer and scrolling through your social media platforms.
If you have experienced this phenomenon, leaving you questioning if your phone is listening to you or magically reading your mind, then you have followed the path advertisers have carved out for you allowing them to track your online footprints.
Susan Triolo, a former employee of Wunderman Thompson formerly known as J. Walter Thompson, a digital advertising agency, sat down to talk how advertisers are able to “follow” their consumers with intentions to modify their platforms accordingly.
What is the strongest method of tracking online consumers?
Without a doubt, with cookies. The name sounds all cute and innocent, but they are every advertiser’s strongest tool. When you hear someone mention a HTTP cookie, you have to realize that is an umbrella term. It’s a text file on your browser, used to identify your device and recall information. There are different types of cookies that fall within this umbrella. For example, you have functional cookies, that help websites especially ones you shop on work. Say you put something in your amazon cart, the functional cookies will note this on your browser so when you revisit Amazon it can have it sitting there. Then there are cookies like advertising or analytic ones that keep track of where you are going on a website. If a company has a ton of activity on say, product prices they are going to make sure that is easily accessible and appealing to be on.
Usually there is an option to not accept cookies, or there are ways to disable tracking on your device, are there any types of tracking tools like cookies that can’t be disabled.
Images can be the kicker in that department. Because more times than not, a tracking pixel with an HTML coding on it will be on the picture that you’re clicking on. Basically, once you click on the pic, it sends information about your device to whoever is putting the image up in the first place. These unlike cookies do not need a request from you to accept them, and people fundamentally are visual and like pictures. Sure, you can make it so your computer doesn’t load them, but that wouldn’t be as fun to scroll through and us as advertisers know that.
If I look something up on my phone will it automatically be tracked on my computer as well?
Yes and no. The biggest way that computers and smartphones or devices like tablets tie into one another is with applications that need to you sign in. If you sign into them on everything then yes, companies have a better way of tracking what you’re interacting with. If you’re not logging into applications, then it makes it harder to gather up a history on your behavior with them.
You mentioned other devices such as a tablet, but what about when it comes to devices like Alexa and Google Homes? Do they communicate with advertisers at all? I always wonder if they are listening…
I don’t want to freak you out or the people reading this, but yes, if you have a smart device with a microphone and camera, you are going to have eyes and ears on you in a sense. People use these devices like assistants. You will hear people telling it to add notes, make lists, schedule appointments, play different songs, record TV shows we like… and this isn’t just being stored in the computer part of these devices. Real life people go through this information and vocal requests to further advance these devices and their capabilities. We know that there are certain trigger words to make it turn on and interact with us to our knowledge, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t words that activate listening capabilities without us being aware.
Does that information stay with the device or those specific people analyzing it?
That is a tough one, that I can’t answer point blank. What I can tell you is there aren’t really any laws that say that information has to stay put, unless a company outwardly says that the information won’t be shared. Advertisers will go to pretty great lengths to figure out how people tick and have no problem buying it from data brokers. Before meeting you had asked if I had seen the New York Times Article about geolocation data, which I had. Take that for example, all data associated with your location, time spent in stores, any day to day activities, that all can be sold to companies inquire about it. Now I am not saying its personal, and they are zoning in on you, but you are amongst a group they are wanting to learn how to interact better with, so they can sell you on products.
Do you think its an invasion of privacy?
Yes, to a degree, but people are also awfully quick to disregard the cookies and terms and conditions associated with apps. That saying “Read the fine print,” can come in handy in that department. If people don’t want to be tracked, turn off tracking abilities on your phone, turn off locations on apps when you don’t need them on… be proactive. It is kind of crazy though how it locks down your abilities to search for things with ease.
Well I think we covered a lot today Susan, thank you for sitting down with me. Not gonna lie, I may be changing quite a few settings on my phone after this…
*Laughing* Yes I know what you mean. Thank you for chatting. Hopefully I didn’t scare you to much. It is a crazy world out there now with the technology we have access to. It’s a blessing and a curse. Its funny how many people I run into that are against the tactics companies use to learn how to sell to their consumers, until they start up their own business and are looking to do the same thing. Like anything else, I think it’s a matter of keeping it in moderation and being knowledgeable about what we are exposing and opening ourselves up to.
